


Bonded to the Bone

by unholygrass



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: BAMF Pidge | Katie Holt, Elemental Pidge, Family Feels, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Green is the best, Matt angst, Matt is sad, Missing, Paladins as gods, Pidge Angst, Pidge | Katie Holt-centric, Rescue, Reunions, Team as Family, The Green Lion, forest, forest god
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-03 19:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14003157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unholygrass/pseuds/unholygrass
Summary: Pidge is missing, the Green Lion is angry, Matt is heartbroken, Voltron is useless, and Pidge may have inadvertently become god of the forest in the meantime.





	Bonded to the Bone

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah I don't know what this is. I had the idea in my head for awhile and I wanted to write Lotor seeing Pidge be all powerful and I also wanted her missing and yeah this just happened. Some of it doesn't make sense and for that I'm sorry.

The castle ship has gone through seventy two night cycles since Pidge had last been on board. Allura vaguely wonders how many Earth days that would be equivalent to. 

 

Pidge would know. 

 

She sighed, pushing her bangs away from her face while she gazed at the stars passing by outside. The air around her felt stuffy and hot even though she knew full well that the air filters were working at peak performance. She sat propped up against one of the teladuv pillars, energy flowing through her body even though she didn’t technically have contact with the designated controls. She didn’t have to focus to keep the wormholes open like she used to when she was younger. Working the teladuv was second nature now, and even though she had a total of four wormholes open, she wasn’t really struggling for it. 

 

She wanted to be out with her teammates looking for Pidge also, but instead she sat in the castle, giving them all a way back home should they need a hasty retreat. They’d gone off in pairs, searching distant planets and speaking to any species who seemed to understand that they were missing a paladin. They’d plastered her face where it was safe to do so, hesitant to inform any enemies that she was alone to fight, but desperate to inform people that they needed to find her. 

 

The reactions had been great and supportive, entire planets sending out ships to search their forests and deserts, seas and skies. Small armies of search crews, aiming to find a young lost paladin in any way they could— and yet still, everyone had come up empty. It seemed as though the Green paladin had disappeared out of the known universe. 

 

Or— the Green paladin had disappeared into the hands of her enemies. 

 

The thought alone makes Allura’s stomach tumble over itself sickly, a thick lump rushing up her throat. They had evidence of what the Galra did to their prisoners, especially their high profile ones. 

 

Shiro and Lotor had spent nearly an entire day in the communication hub at the Galran HQ, corresponding with every ship, base, outcrop, and brigade that existed, compiling a list of generals who had not called ceasefire with Voltron in favor to join Lotor’s military ranks who also had the resources to hold a paladin without raising suspicion. 

 

The list was hopelessly large, and the fact of the matter was that if a rogue Galran general or even a ambitious lower ranking officer decided to hold Pidge, there would be virtually no way to find her. It’s a problem eerily similar to the situation Pidge was dealt when searching for her father and brother, and after seven night cycles they dig into her notes, hoping to find evidence of any prisons she had deemed unworthy to hold a high profile prisoner. 

 

But even if they shortened the list, there was still the possibility that she was just stranded on some foreign moon, away from prying eyes and civilization. 

 

Allura closed her eyes, no longer wishing to see the endless stream of stars that flowed by. They only reminded her how impossibly large the universe was— and how small their chances of finding her were. 

 

They had miraculously gotten Shiro back, and Pidge  _ had  _ found her brother and father, but Allura isn’t so sure they’re going to get any more luck. 

 

She feels the Green lion rumbling in her hangar deep in below the bridge, and Allura’s mood somehow dewindles even further. The Green lion was one of the smallest lions in Voltron, curious and full of endless surprises to her usefulness. The lion’s reality was warped around curiosity and knowledge, and usually on the few occasions that she acted on her own, it was not hard to predict why the lion was acting the way she was. 

 

Now however, there is no predicting her. 

 

When Shiro had gone missing, Black had remained the same, hesitant but willing in what the Paladins had to do to save the universe. 

 

Green does not seem to be so gracious.

 

She had her particle barrier activated since they first saw her, standing— no,  _ looming  _ over anyone who dared to entered her hangar. Her eyes were set at the door, threatening but never malicious, like she was tense and on edge but not towards the paladins themselves. Allura had been hoping to use the Green lion’s connection with Pidge to find her missing paladin, but Green had constantly been otherwise engaged. The other lions rested, falling into a state of light statis when not in use, coming to life when needed, injecting their thoughts into the heads of their paladins when they pleased. 

 

Green however, was active at all times, practically vibrating with energy at all times. She often rumbled at nothing, growling into the air at seemingly random times— but they all knew better. The lions did nothing without a reason. 

 

They just had to hope that Green was so alive because she was with Pidge mentally, and that her standoffish attitude was not because Pidge was in danger. 

 

It was creating quite a problem however, because they were running out of leads to follow, and Green was slowly becoming their last option. 

 

Allura dropped her head into her hands. That had opened a whole new door of problems. 

 

Twice already they had been hailed by allies in desperate need of Voltron, and they were quickly being faced with the fact that they need a... temporary green paladin until they located Pidge. The immediate choice had been Matt, who had been absolutely  _ livid _ at the mere concept of it all; replacing Pidge,  _ him  _ replacing pidge, the admittance that they couldn’t find her, that they had other duties that weren’t finding his baby sister— it had taken nearly an hour for Shiro to talk him down, but it hadn’t mattered anyway. The Green lion was having none of it. She wouldn’t even lower her shield for him. They went through the trials again, each paladin trying to coax the lion open, but none of them got any farther than Matt had. 

 

The Green lion had seemed to have abandoned her duties as a Lion of Voltron in favor to be the Lion of the Green Paladin instead. 

 

She looked up as her communication line dinged at her, informing her that Lance and Matt had returned from their searching in the Tonna Galaxy, and she stood, focusing on putting herself back together, but she’s fairly certain it doesn’t work. She’s exhausted and so,  _ so _ homesick for her youngest paladin. She knew their team was a family, and that she relied on her teammates for most affectionate bonds, but she had not realized that she could miss someone so fiercely. She had lost her father, but knowing he was dead and having a sense of closure with that made the loss entirely different. This was something else entirely— something that came with the bond of Voltron. Something that happened when you allowed other people to see into your psyche and experience each other’s emotions. When she had become a fellow paladin of Voltron, Allura had accepted Pidge into her very soul and without her... there was something missing. 

 

\-------------------------

 

It has been eighty one night cycles since they had lost signal from Pidge. Shiro wasn’t sure if Matt was going to be able to hold out much longer without ditching them all. His friend was standoffish, looking for any alley he could express his anger through, and lately that was coming in the form of challenging any order he tried to give. He understood Matt’s pain.  _ He did.  _ He loved Pidge too. The little hellion had become just as big a part of his family and his life and his soul and she had to everyone else on the ship, but they had to keep it together if they wanted to get anything done and find her.  

 

But Matt was distancing himself, not joining them for meals or missions, not interacting and not training with them. He may not even be aware of it, but Shiro was. Matt was looking for an out, looking for a reason to leave them so he could look for his sister on his own where he would be allowed to run himself into the ground and avoid all other responsibilities that weren’t saving Katie. 

 

Shiro does manage to talk Matt into coming into Green’s hangar again in an attempt to locate Pidge. Green had been a dead end so far, but she was obviously connected to Pidge and if they could just  _ get through to her _ ...

 

It ended with the two of them seated against Green’s shield, frustrated and angry, but unwilling to admit defeat so early

 

“Please Green.” Matt’s voice broke the silence. “I know you’re with her. You’re with her right now— I can feel it— I just can. Please... Just tell us where she is... or let me inside so I can find her...” Shiro didn’t look up when he heard his friend’s voice crack. He’d witnessed Matt break down enough times in the previous months to know that no comfort from him would help. 

 

Nothing other than Katie was going to fix their problem. 

 

Green doesn’t move. 

 

\---------------------

 

On day One hundred and three, Pidge is found on a tiny planet in the Yelao system by Lotor. He was returning to Galra HQ after a brief meeting with three generals about two powerful uprisings when he’s partially blinded by a beam of translucent green light. It stretches across the system, bouncing off of stray asteroids, but he’s less interested in where it was going, and more interested in where it came from. He had been on high alert as it was, flying through a known hub for space pirates who would attack ships and kill anyone on board. 

 

He lands on the surface of the planet, his ship nearly swallowed whole by the dense forest that was suffocating the earth. He does not know the Green Paladin well. He had only interacted with her a handful of times, when she had hacked past several difficult security measures on a rogue Galran ship, and a few times when he had given her information about the best way to sneak into a Reiko Command Center. 

 

He’d meet with her and the blue and yellow paladins after noticing a projectile had been launched off his ship while he and Allura had been investigating quintessence, and he had fought every muscle in his face to keep from laughing about how the three of them had spent the day causing pointless mayhem. Allura and Shiro had seemed embarrassed, but the three youngest paladins had no shame in admitting that they had repurposed a sentry and fucked around for the day. He came to understand that the youngest had been the true mastermind in making the reprograming happen, as was her specialty. 

 

He’d come to learn more about her while she was missing rather than while she was with them. He learned that all of the other paladins were very protective, and that Allura was worried sick over her youngest teammate. He’s learned that the Green Lion listened to no man and was unconcerned with the duties of Voltron. He’d learned that if she had been captured she would have been strong enough to hold out or escape (according to her teammates) and also that if she were stranded she would have done everything in her power to contact them (As she had done before). 

 

And none of his vague information could have prepared him for what he found waiting for him on that small forested planet. 

 

He’s approached almost immediately by a pack of furious animals, a mix between bears and wolves that were double him in size. It takes an exhausting amount of time to fend them off and even longer to try and locate where the source of the energy beam came from. He spends several hours hiking up the side of a cliff face which is wrapped in moss and vines, and only once he reaches the top does he realize that the vines are  _ moving into his way _ . He thought he had imagined it, but he hadn’t. They were truly wrapping around his ankles and trying to force him away. It would have been quite dangerous if he weren’t so experienced and simply hacked them off, but after slicing through them the first time with his blade he feels sick for doing so, like a faint screeching at the base of his skull wanted to prevent him from doing it again. 

 

He made good pace after that, traveling too quickly for the vines to catch him and aiding his adventure with the help of his jet pack. He has yet to hail the castle to tell them what he’s found, but as he approaches the source he finds his finger’s itching for his communication line. 

 

He hadn’t wanted to excite them should he have found nothing, but he has definitely found  _ something _ . 

 

The ground has been hollowed out by an escape pod of some kind, with moss, vines, leaves, and trees sprouting at whim around the crash, oozing inside and providing both cover and shelter. There are too many animals to count, furry things and scaly things and pointy things all moving about— some with their hackles raised in alarm and others curiously coming closer to sniff him out. Eyes of every color and shape are trained on him, but he doesn’t see...

 

Her. Crouched atop a tree, glaring down at him like the evader he is, bayard in hand and ready to strike. She’s missing all of her armor except for her leg guards, stripped down to her black undersuit and smeared in mud and camouflaged with leaves. Her hair has been cut even closer to her skull, jagged edges making it stick up in wild angles and points. She reflects the same feral energy that had filled the Green Lion’s hangar the last time he had seen it. He can practically see her eyes glowing with the same light that shines from her lion. She blends in with the animals too well, and when she speaks, they all go silent. 

 

“Lotor?” 

 

The sudden quiet unnerves him, and he looks away from her to make sure he’s not about to be mauled by the creatures surrounding him. He’s surprised to find that they had all turned to face the Green paladin, each sitting and gazing upwards at her expectantly. She says something in a language he’s never heard, and each animal goes about their own way. With a graceless drop she lands at his feet and stands, bayard still glowing. She looks him over when she stands, and the Green Lion flashes in his mind, looming over him as he stands in the hangar while the paladins try to convince the lion to open up.

 

He can tell she doesn’t know what to say, or if she should fully trust him. He cannot blame her. He doesn’t know what to say either. They are allies, but they do not know each other. 

 

She ends up breaking the silence first. “Can you give me a ride home?” 

 

\--------------------------

 

Home, as it is, is the castleship. He collects her armor while she says goodbye to her animal companions, and he makes note of the fact that when in danger, the paladins had the potential to become young gods in their given element. It had been Pidge who had sent the first pack to attack him and also her who used the vines to slow him down. She says she’s been attacked three times since she crashed, and that she hadn’t predicted a rescue until she managed to acquire more equipment to contact the castle with. The beam had been her, looking for any sign of her friends and coming up empty. 

 

She flinches if he talks too loudly and she doesn’t ever let him out of her sight or turn her back to him. She doesn’t put her helmet on and her fingers linger on the leaves as they are about to leave. Once he’s closer he can see how her skin is rough and blistered from the sun and how her hands and arms have scars from the prickly foliage. There’s traces of blood on her suit but she doesn’t move as though injured aside from favoring her left side instead of her right. He notices her hesitation to sheth her bayard and wonders if that’s because of him or from the months of living in danger. 

 

She looks very out of place on his ship which is clean and orderly and she is anything but. She smells of sweat and dirt and sunshine and she makes a weak joke about leaving mud on his seat. He catches her mumbling in the same language from earlier, and when he asks about it she seems confused that he doesn’t understand her. 

 

They are flying towards the castle who cannot move because Matt, Lance, Hunk, and Coran are out in their own separate wormholes looking Pidge, and moving the castle would upset their ability to get back safely. 

 

“How long has it been?” She asks him, looking over to where he was piloting them back. 

 

“Over one hundred quintants.” 

 

“Is everyone okay? Did they manage to form Voltron without me?” Her voice is hopeful. For some reason he doesn’t like disappointing her. 

 

“No. The Green Lion has refused to allow anyone to pilot it.”

 

“Her.” Pidge corrects him. “Green is a her.”

 

“The Green Lion has refused to allow anyone to pilot her.” He repeats. “But there have not been too many problems in which Voltron was the only solution. They have managed.” She nods at his words, and the next time he looks over at her, she has fallen asleep. 

 

\------------------

 

The landing wakes her as he planned, though he is sure if he wished he could have landed smoothly enough for her to remain asleep. However he is not sure yet if she would attack him should he try to remove her from his ship and into the castle, and waking her really was the best option. By the time they disembark, Allura and Shiro have come running into the loading bay. 

 

Shiro wraps his arms around her so fiercely that it looks as though she might disappear inside his chest, and she wraps her arms around his neck and she might be crying but it’s too muffled to tell. Shiro pressed a fevered kiss to the side of her head, too happy that she was alive and with them to care that his hands were shaking. He lets go of her eventually where she’s caught by Allura, who grabs her shoulders and lifts her up briefly, crushing the youngest paladin until she’s sure she won’t disappear again. She says something nearly unintelligible about never letting her out of her sight again. 

 

It’s then apparent that Pidge is most definitely crying, wiping battered hands across her face to dispel the tears and snot that lingers there. She leans into Shiro’s side, seeking comfort there as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a firm squeeze. She asks if they can wait for the others to return in Green’s hangar, which both surprises them and doesn’t at the same time. 

 

\----------------------

 

Green is sitting, shield down and mouth open to welcome her Paladin inside. Her eyes glow brightly in the dim hangar and when Allura focuses, she can hear a faint purr echoing through the room. 

 

Pidge touches her lion with steady hands even when her breath hitches, and Lotor finds himself glad that the two have been reunited for more than practical war terms. 

 

The Green Paladin and the Green lion were connected at a molecular level, and they deserved to be together through life and death both. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Please review!


End file.
